cause them to desist from their interprize This but whets their anger and inventions Animos a vulnere sumunt Like Antaeus they seem to receive vigour from their very falls This shows their Obstinacy and inveteracy 3. They have many ways to execute their Fury and to bring their hidden purposes to perfection The Sword and the Mattock open Force and hidden Treachery I might put in the Pen likewise none of the least invenom'd Weapons they make use of to accomplish their wicked designs Besides a thousand little Arts they have to delude the Vulgar and to hold silly ignorant people Captive this shows their Cunning. They do as Balaam did at the request of Balak Num. 23.13 if they cannot curse Israel from one Hill they will try another and another after that to see if at length some one lucky hit may render their Fascinations and Enchantments prosperous and successful 1. The Enemies of the Church are many Too many for me to speak to within the compass allotted for this Exercise too many for the poor Church by her own strength to encounter but not too many for her Almighty Patron and invincible Champion to deliver her from For though all the Legions of Darkness should combine in one against her and call in all their Auxiliaries to their assistance all those who for the Virulency of their Principles and the maliciousness of their practice may be stil'd Devils incarnate yet should they be as chaffe before the wind and the Angel of the Lord scattering them as the fire burneth the Wood and the flame consumeth the Mountains so shall God persecute them with his Tempest and make them afraid with his Storm Though they come about her like Bees yet shall they be extinct as the fire amongst Thorns so suddenly shall they vanish and be no more Though the Red Dragon open his mouth wide to devour her and her offspring yet God will prepare a place-in the Wilderness for them to retire unto And though he follow her thither yet he shall give her the wings of an Eagle that she may fly away and be at rest and though the Serpent cast whole Floods of Water out of his mouth to overwhelm her yet the Earth shall preserve her by receiving them into her large and vast Treasury As the Air before so the Earth now yea even all Elements shall by the direction and command of their Superior Agent contribute to her security and preservation The Enemies of Sion are many She may well say as David did in her person All nations have compassed me about they have consulted together with one consent and are confederate against me the Tabernacles of Edom and the Ishmaelites of Moab and the Hagaerens those indeed who to our great trouble and the greater because assisted by one who calls himself the most Christian King have overspread a considerable part of the once Christian Empire Though the late prosperous successes of the Churches Arms make us to hope that notwithstanding those indirect and unchristian practices their late Half Moon is hastily declining to its utmost Waine Gebal also and Ammon and Amalek the Philistines with the inhabitants of Tyre Assur also is joyned with them and have holpen the Children of Lot. The Enemies of Sion you see are many The Vineyard which God hath planted for himself with his own right hand is infested and troubled with many Adversaries that envy her Felicity and endeavour her utter extirpation There are wild Boares that break down her Hedges and would lay her open and make her common to the Beasts of the Wide and unmanured Wilderness And there are little Foxes that creep through them and crop her tender Budds There are Sacrilegious Caterpillars that devour her fairest Clusters her best and richest possessions And there are Teredines little Creatures that worm themselves into the body of the Vine and corrupt it and others that gnaw at the very Root thinking to kill and destroy it I shall passe by her Forreign Adversaries Atheists and Infidells who deny the very Principles and first Grounds of our most excellent Religion whose Eyes the God of this World hath so blinded that they cannot see the wonders of Gods Law and come to some of her domestick and homebred Foes those that eat of her Bread and drink of her Cup that partake of the same Ordinances Communicate of the same Sacraments that acknowledge the same faith and yet either out of Pride or Ignorance Folly or Conrempt lift up their heel against her 1. Some of those many Enemies of Sion that molest and disturb her are those who joyning with her in her outward worship in the observation of her excellent Discipline and the belief of her sound and Orthodox Doctrine do notwithstanding to their own shame and the Churches prejudice depart from her in their practice and manner of outward conversation whose lives are no ways answerable to that most holy Religion which they profess Qui aliud aiunt aliud vivunt That speak the words of Simon Peter and live the life of Simon Magnus And truly these are none of the least Enemies that the Church of Christ hath for there are no wounds like the wounds of a Friend they strike deepest and are most unkindly resented Such as these give advantage to the Gainsayers of the Truth and make them speak evil of that most innocent Gospel that is first pure and then peaceable Methinks I hear our blessed Saviour saying to the sinning Christian that lives indirect opposition to those divine Precepts which he left to be the Rule and Guide of our Actions something not unlike what the chast and dying Arria said to her beloved Paetus Vulnus Iudaeus quod fecit non dolet inquit Sed quod tu facies hoc mihi crede dolet The Wounds that the malicious and blood-thirsty Jews made in my Hands my Feet do not trouble me being they were given me for thy sake do procure an Attonement for thee but they are those which thou my Friend and Companion whom I loved as my self those which thou who art a part of me a Member of my Body givest me with thy Blasphemies with thy Oaths and Execrations those are the Wounds that stabb me to the heart that crucifie me afresh that put me anew to open shame Pitty it is that those who are right as to their understanding should be perverse in their Wills and irregular in their Affections That those who are so far inlightned in their minds should mix Heaven with Earth light with Darkness for what Fellowship or Communion is there between them Oh! if there be any such here let me beseech them by the Mercies of God by the Bowels of Christ Jesus not to Eclipse the Light of their Profession by the dull interposition of their carnal and Earthly desires 2. Another sort of the Enemies of the Church which do her and themselves no small prejudice are those who by opposing her Doctrine and separating from her Communion
Sulphureous matter from Hell it self which maintains the flames of Dissention which like the Funerall pile of the two irreconcileable Brothers Eteoches and Polmices whose Enmity lasted longer then their breath divide themselves as also the more vehement fire of Persecution The Enemies of Sion are moved by a restless Spirit even by him who is ever in action going too and fro about the Earth and his chief business and designe is to disturb the Peace of Sion and to hinder the wellfare of Jerusalem to pull down the old Temple of the Lord and to erect a new Chappel for his own Worship From the infancy of Religion he began to persecute the holy Seed nor will he leave off to malign their happiness and to create them trouble till this world be no more and till they arrive at that unchangeable State of rest and Security which he being bound with his confederates in everlasting chains of darkness shall have no power though his perverse will shall still be the same to desturb or molest he seduced Eve in Paradice from the duty She owed to her Lord and Husband and drew both of them from their Allegiance to their Supream Head and Master and thereby made them instrumentall to their own and our Misery He instigated Cain to Sacrifice his innocent Brother indeavouring thereby to destroy the Church in the first Marter and Confessor of it Endless would it be and indeed needless to run through the many oppositions that the chosen People of God met with by his sly and cunning insinuations before their settlement in the promis'd Land needless I say it would be to rehearse the severall hardships they underwent in a Congregation of reformed Protestants to whom the free use of the Sacred History of the Bible is allowed in their own tongue wherein the several particulars relateing thereunto are contained Were I indeed to Preach to an Assembly of Lay Papists and had occasion to make use of any part of the Sacred writ to give a demonstration of Gods care of his People under their most cruel and severe Task-masters then it would be necessary to make a full and perfect recitall of all the circumstances belonging to such a deliverance and that because their cunning and merciless Spiritual Guides as they call them look up the Records of Eternal Truth from them and keep them in ignorance of those wonderfull works of God which he hath done for his chosen Seed it being in some of the Catholick Countryes as they are Stiled a crime within the compass of the Inquistion for any laick to have a Bible in the Vulgar tongue in his custody but to you it is given to know those truths that concern your everlasting Salvation and if it be not your own or your Parents faults you may be able to understand the whole Series and method of Gods Mercies to his Church from the beginning of the world till the Revelation of Jesus Christ Happy are you if you know how to make a right use of this great Priviledge to your own advantage I shall therefore be very brief and that rather to refresh your Memories then to inform your understandings I shall not stand to reckon up the several Depravations Schismes and persecutions that hapened to the Children of Israel under the several Dispensations of the Old Law untill the comeing of our Saviour in the flesh and then at the Entrance of the Captain of our Salvation on the great and charitable work of our Redemption Satan renews his Assaults doubles his files and again seeks to strangle Christianity in the very Cradle He incites Herod to lay in wait for him and what he could not accomplish by his Agents he attempts to perform in his own Person after this he exposes him to the malice of the Scribes and Pharises and at last when he thought his designe finisht he was vanquisht by the Cross and the Death of Jesus prov'd the life of his Church who knows not what Enemies how powerfull and how cruel the first Propagators of the Christian Religion met with from his bloody Instruments in the first Ages and Centuries of the Church how they were thrown to wild Beasts devoted to the flames Broyl'd upon Gridireons pounded in Mortars and put to all the Torments that Mans malicious wit could invent or his power execute Afterwards when the Gospel of Grace and Peace had by its own inocent Arts and iresistable Charmes the Divine Spirit working along with them spread it self over a great part of the world but then by degrees as the best things here below are subiect to coruption became tainted with Errors and overcast with Ignorance and superstition when a few as most great things have small beginnings to whom a light from above shined through the grosse and thick Mist being sensible of their Errors and willing to Forsake them and to bring others likewise out of them Endeavoured to reforme those dangerous and damnable Corruptions which had dureing that General state of darkness crept into the Church what opposition what contradction what Persicution did those first Reformers and Assertors of the true Antient Catholick and Apostolick-Faith meet with from those whom either incorrigible Obstinacy caused to persevere in their ignorance or whom carnall Interest obliged to act contrary to those Principles of light and Knowledge where with they were informed I might run this from the beginning of our own Reformation down to these very days and show you how the several Enemies of the Church have been still hammering and beating out Plots and makeing Fetters from time to time to Shackle us again and to reduce us to our former Slavery No sooner had we through Gods providence escaped from the land of Darkness but the Egyptians as loth to loose so sweet and profitable a pray pursued us useing all Arts and means both force and cunning both threatings and temptations to bring us back to our old house of Bondage But this will more properly belong to the third head which was this 3. As the Enemies of Sion are many and their Assaults frequent so they have many ways to accomplish and bring about their Pernitious designes They know that the same Stratagems in Warr are seldom twice us'd with good success and therefore they vary their Arts and change their Habits according to the times they live in and the Persons with whom they have to deal I might show you here what little and yet destructive Arts some of the Enemies of our Church breed amongst our selves doubtless deriveing their small bye Streames from the corrupt and infected Fountain of Rome use to under mine her Foundations and by dissolveing her Order endeavouring to subvert her very Constitution But seeing the solemnity of this day the happy day of our Deliverance from one of the most horid Plots that ever was contriv'd against our Religion and just upon the Brinke of Execution seems to Point to me to direct my Discourse to that Party who were the cruel
allmost starved Samaritans At other times he preserves his Servants by discovering the councills and revealing the designes of those that seek their destruction thus God by the Prophet Elisha discovered the secret Cabinet Councills of the King of Syria by which means the King of Israel saved himself otherwhile he smites them with blindness as he did he great host that came to intrap the Prophet Elisha and takes them in the same snare they layd for others Sometimes he infatuates their Councills makeing them thereby instrumentall to the preservation of those whom they had markt out for destruction Thus the writeing of an ambiguous Letter to the Lord Mounteagle to diswade him from coming to the House that day was a Secondary means of preventing that bloody and horid designe which should on this day have been executed and for the happy discovery whereof we have this Morning paid our gratefull acknowledgment to our Mercifull Saviour and Deliverer And as God hath many ways so he hath many means to protect his Chosen and to suppress either the force or to defeat the cunning of their Adversaries As his Angels his Ministring Spirits sent abroad continually for the good of his Elect witness Sonacheribs vast army destroyd in one night by them his Magistrates which are the Sheilds of the Earth and his Ministers which are the Chariots and horsemen of Israel But in all these we must look up to God the first Mover of the wheel and return our Praise and thanksgiveing to him to whom it alone belongs which brings me to the last head The duty of the Church the thankfull retribution she is bound to make to her great Champion and Defender of all her deliverances may Israel now say The remembrance of her past dangers ought to be the Burden of her Song of thanksgiving as the Reduplication in the Text and in other places of the Psalmes seem to import Not unto us not unto us O Lord but unto thy Name be glory they compassed me about they compassed me I say about but in the Name of the Lord I will destroy them All the redoublings almost that we meet with are but so many repetitions of Gods favour and Mercies whereby we are the more effectually and strongly stird up to a chearfull thankfullness to him who is the Giver of all victory and the only Preserver of all those that fear him and put their trust in his mercy A gratefull acknowledgment of Benefits received is one of the first Principles and common notions we bring into the world along with us neither have we only the indelible and indispensible Law of Nature to commend this duty of gratitude to us but the positive command of God himself to inforce the commemoration of either particular or national deliverances under no less apenalty then the absolute forfeiture of them God will by no means admit that his mercies should be writ in Sand to be washt away by the next coming in of the Tyde but that they should be recorded in such lasting Characters that may transmit them to succeeding generations He commanded a Pot of Manna to be preserved in his Tabernacle to testifie to after ages that miraculous Providence where by he sustained the Children of Israel for forty years in the dry and barren Wilderness And when the waters of Jordan were dryd up to afford an easie passage to that vast army into the promis'd Land we find that Joshua erected 12 stones in the place where the waters were cut off to be a perpetuall Memoriall of that wonderous separation Nay we are told that in the same place where they past over the Red Sea the Print and Footsteps of that Stupendious March. May be seen to this day as a lasting Monument of that Miraculous Preservation I shall not stand to justifie the truth of that bold and seemingly improbable relation but sure I am that the signall steps and prints of this days wonderfull deliverance remain fresh in this Nation to this present time for though many noble and Eminent neighbouring Structures have since not without suspition of indirect contrivances from the same cruell hands felt the fury of the merciless Flames yet those ancient and glorious Piles of building at Westminster where the Plot was layd where the seene was contrived and which were designed for one common heap of rubish stand hitherto as a monument of our Churches triumph and their shame and at once bid defiance to the jaws of Time and their inveterate Malice Let not therefore the complicated Blessings which by the happy discovery of this days horrid Treasons descended upon this Nation be blotted out of our remembrance so long as we wish well to the English Monarchy or to the Protestant Religion for to this days Triumph we owe the Preservation of both Nay least the remembrance of those Miraculous Deliverances that God hath bestowed upon this Kingdome by snatching it out of the bloody Jaws of Popery should ever be forgotten by us he hath been gratiously pleas'd as it were to refresh our Memoryes and to reprint the Characters of his goodness to be continued to our Posterity to signalize once more the same day of the same Month and the same date of the year with fresh instances of his gratious Providence over us and his singular protection of us and our most excellent Religion Mikeing 88 in this wonderfull Century and the now twice happy fifth of November the glorious day of his present Sacred Majesties Arrivall in England for the Preservation of our Liberties and Religion the joyfull Seasons once more of our deliverance from that fearfull inundation of Popery that was ready to break in upon us Let us therefore offer unto God our Protector and Preserver a double Tribute of thankfullness for the joynt Deliverances vouch saf'd to us and our fore Fathers on this Solemn Festivall which deserves to be mark't with a new Star and colour'd with a fresh and richer graine in our English Calender Deliverances by which we are rescued from being carried back to our old abandond Egypt of Idolatry and Superstition Mercies to which we owe the continuance of many noble Families which otherwise had been blown up without any Luxury or Prodigality of their own and lastly Mercies to which we must ascribe the free Excercise of our Religion and our meeting together in this venerable and Agust Place appointed for Gods holy Worship a place to which that Party were lately too near Neighbours and which they lookt upon with too greedy an Eye whereby we have this oppertunity of Magnifieing that gratious Providence which countermind all their hellish Plots in both the Miraculous Revolutions And set us show our Gratitude to Almighty God on this great occasion chiefly by wishing well unto Sion and doing the things that may conduce to her Peace Let us not be accessory to our own Misfortunes in calling down judgements from Heaven in removeing those Golden Candlesticks which are yet God be praised and long may they continue so fixt in our Sanctuaries either by the wickedness of our lives or the vitiousness of our Principles Let there be no Divisions among us the fomenting of which is the ready way to blast and sully those extraordinary blessings which we at present enjoy and which an unanimous conformity to the most pure and excellent rules and Discipline of our Church is the most likely and prudentiall way to confirme to our further Benefit and advantage Let those who upon slight and triviall Grounds separate from our Communion consider seriously with themselves who they were that have ever since the Reformation been the stout opposers of Popery and who they now are which appear as the resolute Champions of the Protestant Religion against all it's Enemies whatsoever And then let them be asham'd to stand out any longer against them who have alwayes stood in the Gap to Defend them and the Faith which they Profess Let them all run into the Arms of our common Mother the Church of England and rest assured that they cannot but be safe unde her Shelter whom God hath so miraculously restored and preserved And let all acquiesce in the wise and the sober determinations of those Reverend and pious Compilers of the most excellent form of her Dicipline which as well as her Doctrine some of them seald and confirm'd with their best blood For we may assure our selves of this Truth that as a Church over burden'd with a multitude of Ceremonies is like a Bird with great Wings many gay Feathers and a small light empty useless Body So that Church if we may call it one that despises all outward Decency and Order is like the unplum'd Jay in the Fable a trouble to her self and laughing stock to her Neighbours Lastly let us endeavour to be Sober in our Judgements prudent in our Conversation putting on a calme meek obedient teachable Temper not affecting singularity but agreeing as in one Faith one Hope one Baptisme in the acknowledgement of one Lord and Saviour of us all So likewise in one outward form of worship even that Incomperable one which is so happily and long may it be so Establish't by Law among us And let Us bless and Praise God for all his Mercies and then God shall bless us and continue this most excellent Religion which we profess and enjoy in spight of all it's Adversaries and Opposers whatsoever to us and our Posterity for many and many Generations till all Churches shall be gathered into one and united to their Supreme head Christ Jesus our blessed Saviour and Deliverer to whome with the Father and the Holy Spirit three Persons and one God be ascribed oll Power Praise Honour and Glory for ever and ever Amen FINIS